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  “Hello, Hiroshi,” he said. “I must speak with your mother.”

  Hiroshi didn’t much like Mr. Inamoto, with his spidery fingers and fat face. Especially the way he always looked at Hiroshi as though he suspected him of some mischief. It was clear Mr. Inamoto didn’t like children.

  Mother came over. Hiroshi returned to the table and waited. He listened to the voices out in the corridor. Mr. Inamoto sounded flustered but spoke so softly that Hiroshi could hardly understand a word.

  “…says that she left the doll lying in the garden. And the gardener never saw it. So how did it get out in the street, where…?”

  Mother mumbled something.

  “I’ve told you in no uncertain terms that the boy is not allowed into the embassy compound,” Mr. Inamoto scolded her. “I’ve told you not to take him with you, and to keep your keys and your access card in a safe place.”

  “Yes,” Hiroshi heard his mother say. “You’ve told me that. And I’ve told him, too. He knows it perfectly well.”

  “You must realize this is not meant unkindly. It’s the normal security routine for an embassy. It’s just the way these things are done.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Hiroshi felt angry whenever he heard Mother speaking in such a submissive manner. He was angry that people like Inamoto existed, people who only ever thought about money and always had their way just because they were rich.

  “You know he pays you far too little,” Hiroshi said when the conversation was over and his mother had bowed to her boss several times and then returned to the table. “He must charge the embassy twice what he pays you.”

  Mother wasn’t even listening, which is how she reacted whenever he broached the topic. Instead she cross-examined him about the doll.

  “I just found it,” Hiroshi said sulkily. “And then I brought it back. What’s the problem with that?”

  “Where did you find it?”

  Hiroshi had already come up with an answer to this question while she was talking to Inamoto. Since there was no way he could admit to having been in the garden, he said, “Over by the little gate.”

  Though his answer didn’t say which side of the gate he had been on when he found the doll, it wasn’t completely untrue. Who was going to prove otherwise? Mother knew which gate he meant: the narrow, gray iron door in the alleyway across the road, where the embassy trash cans stood, usually collected every Tuesday afternoon. Something could have fallen out when they were picking up the trash.

  “There was a doll lying in front of the little gate?” She looked at him skeptically. “I didn’t see it. When was this?”

  “On Tuesday. And the doll was in a plastic shopping bag from Daiei.”

  “And why didn’t you give it back to the embassy until today?”

  Hiroshi shrugged. “I just didn’t.”

  “Why were you even out there? You spend your whole time looking out the window.”

  “I was just outside, that’s all. You’re always saying that I should get out more.”

  Mother considered all this, her chopsticks motionless in her hand. The whole meal was getting cold just because of that silly doll. He should have just thrown it away.

  “Inamoto-san said somebody had repaired the doll,” Mother said, not letting the topic drop. “Was that you?”

  Hiroshi hesitated, then shrugged. “The head was broken off. I just stuck it back together so they wouldn’t say I had broken it.”

  “And you knew that it belonged to the girl?”

  “I’ve seen her playing with it.” Playing wasn’t exactly the right word, since all he had seen was her throwing it away, but that was just a detail in the end, wasn’t it?

  Mother shook her head, concerned. “Why do you do that? Sit at the window all day, just to see this girl. It’s not good. You’re still much too young for that.”

  Hiroshi was silent. What could he say? Because he had to, that’s why. If she didn’t understand that, there was nothing he could do about it.

  Mother fished a bit of radish out of the pickle dish and said, “I don’t want to lose my job because of some mischief you get into. It’s a good job. We have enough money to get by. We have a nice apartment in a good neighborhood. We would lose all that.”

  Hiroshi had no answer to that either. That mustn’t be allowed to happen, that much was clear. If only because if the worst came to the worst, they would have to move to Minamata to live with his grandparents and Aunt Kumiko. But why should Mother lose her job just because he had repaired a doll and given it back?

  “In any case,” Mother went on, chewing, “you’ll have to come with me tomorrow morning. The honorable ambassador’s wife wants to meet you.”

  2

  You would have thought that they were going to an audience with the emperor himself the way everybody carried on. Mother had to produce her access card time after time and answer questions from every security guard they met along the way. Yes, that’s right: they were on their way to see the honorable lady ambassador. Today. Now. At that, every guard they met furrowed his brow and telephoned through for confirmation. Every time, he listened to what whoever it was on the other end of the line had to say, bowed stiffly, hung up, and waved them through.

  “The honorable ambassador is giving a reception this evening,” one of the men deigned to tell them. “It’s unusual that you should be called for like this.”

  They passed through one metal detector, then another, and all the while Hiroshi’s mother was warning him to be on his best behavior. Speak only when spoken to; bow like a good boy. “Imagine you’re standing in front of the emperor,” she said.

  What had he done? Hiroshi felt the sweat gathering on the palms of his hands with every step they took. He probably wouldn’t be able to say a word whether anyone addressed him or not. Why did the ambassador’s wife want to see him anyway? He had worried about it all night long. It could be anything. Did she want to give him a medal for having rescued her daughter’s precious doll? Or would she have him arrested for having stolen it?

  The bare, gray corridors eventually came to an end, and they were led into a vast and splendid hall. There was a sudden intense smell of flowers and perfume. Huge draped curtains hung down to the floor at every window, just like in old American films. Gigantic oil paintings in massive golden frames were displayed all over the walls. All of a sudden Hiroshi wasn’t sure whether he was awake or dreaming. What had he gotten himself into?

  And then a tall, slender woman was walking toward him. Her pale blond hair was piled up on top of her head, and she was dressed in a golden, shimmering gown. She was a fantastically beautiful woman with porcelain skin and dark eyes, but she clearly hadn’t been expecting them. Wasn’t she the ambassador’s wife, though? The lady who had asked to see them? Hiroshi didn’t think she seemed angry at him—or pleased either. She looked confused—that was it. She seemed startled, as though she had only just at that moment remembered they were supposed to be there.

  “Bow!” Hiroshi heard his mother whisper, and it was a good thing she did, for otherwise he would have forgotten all her warnings.

  Well then, now! Bow like a good boy! Show that he had been well brought up, even if just to please Mother. Hiroshi bowed down low, his back straight, his hands neatly by his thighs, and waited like that until he was spoken to, just as he should. The woman said something. It took Hiroshi some time to realize she had said “Konnichiwa,” “hello,” or at least she had been trying to. Actually, it had sounded more like goninshiki, which meant “making a mistake,” which he actually found funny.

  He straightened up but kept his head bowed. He replied to her greeting with polite reserve and then waited to see what would happen next. The woman seemed unhappy about something. She kept calling out to the back of the room in her own melodious language, and he heard one word over and over again, something like tara doko-têr, a
word that could have meant anything.

  “Do you speak English?” the woman finally asked.

  Hiroshi bowed his head lower. “Yes, madam,” he replied, though as he said the words aloud he felt that was probably stretching the truth. His mother had always insisted he work especially hard in English class because it was his father’s language. She spoke very good English herself, gave him little tests all the time, and never let him get bad grades. In reality, however, though Hiroshi could read English—which was very useful for the Internet—and understood quite a lot, he strongly suspected his pronunciation would make most foreigners burst out laughing.

  But when he heard the next words the ambassador’s wife spoke, he realized she spoke even worse English than Shigeru, the boy in his class who drove Mr. Matsuba, his English teacher, to distraction; Hiroshi couldn’t understand a word. Helplessly, he glanced at his mother, who simply looked back at him in shock. So she couldn’t understand her either. What in the world did this lady want? She seemed to be expecting an answer, but what should he say? He couldn’t possibly tell her he hadn’t understood—that would be the height of rudeness.

  The woman called again for the mysterious tara doko-têr. She seemed to be gradually losing patience. Since Hiroshi couldn’t help her, he kept his gaze fixed on the floor. He felt that any moment fat beads of sweat would start dripping down from his hands onto the carpet. Then he noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye. Somebody was coming into the room. Hiroshi turned his head to get a better look. It was the girl. Although he knew that he shouldn’t, he couldn’t help but lift his head and look at her.

  And then the girl said in impeccable Japanese, “My mother would like to thank you for finding my doll and bringing it back, and she would like to know where you found it.”

  Charlotte couldn’t resist eavesdropping when she heard her mother had summoned the boy who had repaired her doll and brought it back. More than anything, she wanted to see what he looked like, what kind of boy would do something like that.

  Maman was in a good mood today; she always was when they were giving a reception. She never had headaches on those days. But of course she had got herself into trouble again. She had forgotten to tell the interpreter when to come and only remembered when the main gate called up to say the boy and his mother were on their way. She had raced through the house and torn the secretary, Madame Chadal, away from her desk, ordering her to fetch the interpreter immediately and ignoring every protestation that he would never be able to make it in Tokyo’s Saturday morning traffic.

  When she’d heard the door open, Maman had shuddered. “They’re already here,” she muttered. “Quelle horreur!”

  Then she’d straightened her shoulders, put on her best smile, and strode out into the hall.

  Charlotte had scurried through the Yellow Salon and hidden behind the display cabinets by the other door to get a look at their visitor. She had often seen the woman carrying baskets of laundry through the courtyard. She didn’t look as though she had done this sort of work all her life but, rather, gave the strange impression she was hiding here from someone. She must have been beautiful once. She probably still could be beautiful if she ever wore anything but those baggy gray overalls and tidied herself up a bit.

  Maman greeted the two of them with the few snatches of Japanese she had managed to learn. Not only did they obviously not understand a word, it wouldn’t have helped anyway, since Maman would never have been able to continue the conversation in Japanese.

  “Où est le traducteur?” she called again, but Madame Chadal was the only person on the other side of the door. She was holding the phone in her hand and shrugging helplessly, because the interpreter wasn’t even answering his phone, nor was his backup.

  Charlotte had never seen the boy before. He couldn’t be much older than she, and he was quite small, but the way he stood—even though he held that deep bow for such a long time—she felt there was something unyielding in him, a core of tempered steel. Maman then tried in English. Though she certainly spoke the language, her French accent was so strong that the guests were just as lost as before.

  Charlotte was torn. If she rushed in to help, Maman would know she had been eavesdropping, which was strictly forbidden. On the other hand, she couldn’t stand here and watch her mother making a fool of herself just because she was so awful at foreign languages. So she came out of her hiding place and into the hall.

  “How do you know Japanese?” her mother asked in surprise once Charlotte had translated the boy’s answer—that he had found the doll on the street by the gate where the trash was taken away.

  “Yumiko taught me,” Charlotte declared, though that was an exaggeration. Yumiko had her good points, but the ability to actually teach anyone anything would never be one of them. It would do for now, though.

  Her mother could hardly stop shaking her head. “Well how about that…incredible.” She cleared her throat. “Well then. Tell them that I…no, that you…no, that we were very pleased by his, hmm, his good deed and…uh, yes, we must show our appreciation somehow. I just don’t know how at the moment. Try to find out from the boy how we can thank him.”

  “Okay,” said Charlotte. She turned and asked the boy, “Why did you do it?”

  He blinked. “Do what?”

  “Repair my doll.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Shouldn’t I have?”

  Charlotte gnawed her lower lip. She didn’t know what to say to that. “It just broke,” she explained at last.

  He nodded as though that were the most natural thing in the world. “I see.”

  “Do you want to see my room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Come with me.” She turned to her mother and said, “Ça va. We’ve decided to go play together. I’m going to show him my room and all my toys.”

  “Mais non!” Maman opened her eyes wide. “I meant a little present or something like that.”

  “That’s not what he wants,” Charlotte claimed, shocking herself just a little with her own daring. The boy was nice, though, in a way. Maybe they would become friends.

  “But not now! We have the reception today…”

  “That’s not until this evening. It’s hours away.” She couldn’t allow any lengthy debate, she knew that much. So, shooing the boy out with Charlotte, she left.

  The farther they went, the harder Hiroshi found it to believe they were really in someone’s home. Who had an apartment as big as this? What could anybody do with so many enormous rooms? The way all the rooms were filled with what looked like costly antiques, it looked more like an art museum than a home.

  “What’s your name?” asked the girl.

  “Hiroshi,” he said, wondering whether he should tell her when he had first seen her. He would have loved to know why she’d gone out in her nightgown to stand in the rain.

  “I’m Charlotte,” she said. “With an r and an l. Can you say that?”

  He tried it as they went up a wide staircase. “Cha…rotte,” he managed. She laughed, and he tried again. “Cha-re-rotte?”

  She stopped, opened her mouth, and showed him how to do the l. “Put the tip of your tongue behind your teeth up at the top. Do you see?” Her mouth looked just like in a picture book, neat and tidy with thin lips and spotless, pearly-white teeth.

  “I know,” he said. They had practiced in English class. His mother could do it, and she had made him practice, too. “Char…lotte.” It felt strange in his mouth, but he seemed to have gotten it right, because she nodded, smiling, and carried on up the stairs.

  “Yumiko explained it to me,” she said. “How l and r sound the same to Japanese.”

  “Who’s Yumiko?” he asked.

  “My nanny,” she answered. “She’s very nice. She sometimes takes me out, shows me things, and so on.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “
Well, the city. Tokyo. I’m not allowed out on my own. To tell you the truth, I can’t even read Japanese.”

  They had reached the top of the stairs. A long hallway stretched out in both directions with still more framed paintings and thick, patterned carpets. It really did look like a museum.

  “My mother doesn’t like it,” she said. “Me going out, I mean. If it were up to her, I would have to stay inside all the time, or in the garden.”

  “That must be boring,” Hiroshi said.

  “It is.” Charlotte opened a door. “Well, here’s my room.”

  It was vast and crammed full of toys, all neatly lined up on the shelves and in cupboards—dolls and plush animals, but also crayons, paintbrushes, books, and model cars. An enormous four-poster bed stood in one corner, and there was a desk by the window with exercise books and pens and pencils on it. Hiroshi saw at once that he had guessed right: this was the room where he occasionally saw movement at the window. He had guessed as much when he realized they were walking this way as they crossed through the house.

  “And that’s the playground.” Charlotte led him over to the window. Beneath the trees was a swing and a climbing frame. “There used to be a sandbox as well, but my mother had them clear it away, because I’m too big for it.”

  Hiroshi knew about the playground, but he didn’t let on. Though he couldn’t see it from the apartment, he had discovered it on his secret scouting trips through the embassy compound. “You’ve got a big garden.”

  “In Delhi we had an even bigger garden,” she said. “Not as well kept as this one, but there were monkeys, just imagine that! One of them came in through my window once and stole a schoolbook.”

  “Monkeys?” Hiroshi was amazed. He didn’t actually know where Delhi was—in India, maybe?—but this girl had obviously traveled the world. He was almost envious. “That won’t happen to you here.”

  “Oh, it was funny actually. Besides, it was my math book, so it didn’t matter.” She chuckled. He liked it when she laughed.